Fool’s Quest

His eyes flew wide and for a moment his pupils became so large I felt I looked into blackness inside his head. Then he rubbed his face with both hands and when he looked at me again, a sickened and awkward smile spread over his face. “So embarrassing to admit this. I drank too much on Winterfest eve. I was found after the fire. Somehow I took a stab wound. Possibly from a hayfork or a tool of some kind during the fire? It seems to have missed anything vital, but given the injuries I was already recovering from, it has made me an invalid again. I must apologize to Lady Nettle that I have been quite unable to function as an instructor for the children since then.”

I staggered to a chair and sat down. The room whirled round me. Lant regarded me with deep concern. I could not stand his stupefied sympathy. I wanted to pound his face to a bloody ruin with my fists. I closed my eyes and reached out to the king’s Skill-coterie.

I have been in howling storms in which a shout is reduced to a whisper, moved across the sea’s featureless face in a gray fog that does not yield to human eyes. That was what I found. My Skill was quenched, damped like wet firewood that will not catch regardless of the flame put to it. I focused, I strained my Skill to a needle-point, then flung it wide to the sky. Nothing. I was trapped in my body. I could not reach for help. I wondered suddenly how I could be sure I was not in a dream of a dragon’s making. Could I be sure I was not trapped inside the Skill-pillar and this all some insane illusion of my own making? What test could I give myself?

“Where is Revel?” I demanded of FitzVigilant. Again he stared at me blankly. “I told Dixon to bring you and Revel, and meet me in my private study. Oh.” Perhaps it was unreasonable to expect him to find me here in Lant’s room. I rose. “Get up, Lant. I need you with me.”

Something flickered in his eyes. I thought he would whine and protest that he was hurt and it was the middle of the night. Instead I think I glimpsed, finally, the man that Nettle and Riddle had claimed him to be. “Give me a moment,” he said quietly. “And I will be with you. In your private study?”

“The estate study,” I amended.

I left him there, rising slowly and stiffly from his bed. My boots rang in the halls as I strode back to the study. Time after time, I saw the marks that suggested there had been armed invaders in my home. A long score down the paneling as if an edged weapon had been parried aside and dragged there. A broken wall sconce.

The double doors to the estate study had been battered open. Inside the room, a tray with a steaming pot of tea and sliced meat, bread, and cheese awaited me. There were slashes in the hangings that covered the doors to the garden, and something dark had stained the carpet. The wolf in me woke. I took a deep snuff of the room. Old blood. That was blood, on the floor of my study. The wolf within me crouched low and every sense I possessed suddenly flared. There was danger here still. Be still, be silent and watchful.

Dixon, Revel’s assistant, arrived, bearing a tray with brandy on it. “It’s so pleasant to have you home again, sir, even on such short notice. I went to your private study, but when you were not there, I brought your food here.” His words said one thing, his tone quite another. He was a short, stout man, dressed impeccably, even at this late hour. He smiled at me.

Contained. Time to be contained. Everything I felt was compressed into a cold stone box. I needed answers. “Thank you. Put it on the table and sit down, Dixon.”

I waited until he had tentatively settled on a chair. He looked around and gave a tiny sigh of disapproval. The put-upon servant summoned late by the unworthy master. I watched him with every fiber of my being as I asked him, “Where is Steward Revel tonight?”

I got what I had feared. That wash of confusion across his face, his dilated pupils, and then a shamed laugh as he said, “Sir, I don’t know of whom you speak. I am steward for Withywoods. Or have I displeased you so that this is how you tell me I am replaced?”

“Not at all. Revel was steward before you, of course. Do you recall him now?”

The confusion again and a flickering of fear on his features. Then his face smoothed. “I’m sorry, sir, I do not. I think . . . perhaps he had left before I was hired?”

“Lady Shun spoke highly of you.”

Confusion crawled toward panic. “Sir, I don’t know—”

“And little Lady Bee.” I pressed blindly on, not knowing what I was seeking, but willing to crack the man like a nutshell to get at the knowledge I needed.

“Bee . . .”

“Who set fire to the stables?”

He made a sound without words.

“Who attacked the manor? Did they take Lady Bee and Lady Shun? Kill them? What happened?”

The man’s head bobbed and his chest heaved. His lips puffed in and out with his audible breathing. He rocked back and forth in his chair, his mouth working wordlessly. Froth began to gather at the corner of his mouth.